


Immunities

by Viridian5



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Drama, Eureka Maru, Gen, Humor, Pre-Andromeda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-23
Updated: 2003-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:45:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harper’s sick, everyone’s affected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Immunities

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "D Minus Zero" and "Be All My Sins Remembered."
> 
> A pre-Andromeda story.

"Harper, I want to talk with you," Beka said to his back.

Harper didn’t turn to face her, just kept working. "Sure, boss." His hair looked lank, always a sure sign of trouble. Healthy Harpers had spiky coats.

"Turn around to face me."

"Nah, Beka, I can talk and work. I’m good like that."

Definitely trouble. "Seamus, turn around."

He stopped, sighed, and turned around. Sweat sheened his flushed skin, and his eyes had a too bright shine. "I’m fine!" he protested.

Sick again. _Again_. He’d just finished bed rest two days ago for some other bug he’d picked up. This looked new. "Bed."

"I didn’t bring this on myself, and I can still work. I didn’t mean to get sick! I need to work, Beka."

"Go to bed."

"Will you be joining me?" But even his lechery sounded worn down, and it didn’t cover his fear.

"I’ll be tossing you into it, tying you down, and leaving you there if you don’t go on your own. I don’t want you working on my engine while you’re delirious." While she understood why he didn’t want her to discover his latest illness, it pissed her off that he’d put the Maru at risk.

He’d brightened up at the tossing and tying and deflated at the leaving. "I’m going, I’m going. I’ll be good, Beka. You wouldn’t take me back. Just... don’t take me back, okay? Please?"

She always had the option of dropping him back on Earth, something she occasionally reminded him about. "Don’t give me reason to."

He wrapped his arms around himself and nodded, then coughed and followed her away. She could feel the heat pouring off his body from a meter away.

Six months of him onboard, six months of him getting every stray virus and getting ill from them in ways that dwarfed a spacer’s reaction to them. Gene therapy and/or nanotech for his compromised immune system cost too much and thus weren’t options. As they walked, she wondered if immunizations might help him, but who knew if he’d be able to handle spacer-strength shots? If he became deathly ill from the immunizations, she’d really be kicking herself.

Good thing he was mostly worth the trouble of keeping him on.

They switched bunks again, with him getting hers on the bottom. She didn’t want him taking a header off the top one, his usual bed, and cracking his fluffy blond head open. If he needed tending, it would be easier on her if he were closer to the floor. Unlike last time, he didn’t protest.

  


* * *

"I’m not taking care of him," Towfigh said.

"No surprise, since you didn’t take care of him last time either," Beka said sourly. In general, her new environmentals guy did the bare minimum of what she asked of him.

"This is what happens when you try to cut costs by picking up slave world cast-offs."

Before she could bite his head off for that little comment, she heard a commotion from the bunk area and went running. Rev backed away from her-- Harper’s bunk. "It’s Rev, your friend!" Rev said.

"Stay away from me!" Harper said, his voice raspy and guttural, a knife in his hand as he backed into the farther corner of the bunk. "Magog...."

Out of his head. And Rev wasn’t leaving.

"Rev! Come with me," Beka said with a sigh.

"I simply have to make him--"

"You’re not making him anything. Get over here."

"Harper, I am your friend," Rev said, reaching out a furry, clawed hand to Harper. Harper slashed at it, and Rev instinctively bared his teeth.

"Rev! Get over here now!" Beka shouted. She had to separate them. Towfigh smirked.

"Harper, I will be back--" Rev said.

"No, you won’t. No, he won’t, Harper. Rev, get over here." Beka grabbed his arm and dragged him into the cockpit, then closed the door. "What the hell was that? He’s terrified of you, and you just keep coming at him?"

"Harper knows that I am his friend."

"Harper is out of his head with fever, and you look like one of the major predators from his hellhole home. The moment he started yelling and waving a knife, you should have backed away."

"I helped tend to him during his last illness."

"You didn’t scare the hell out of him during his last illness."

"Towfigh won’t help, and you shouldn’t have to do this alone."

Beka sighed. "We do what we have to do. What you have to do is stay away from Harper until he’s well enough to deal with you."

When she’d taken Harper in, she’d let him know that if he had any problems with Rev he had to work them out on his own and not let it affect his work. Rev had been here first, and he was her friend. Harper had looked nauseous at the thought but agreed. Of course, he probably would have agreed to all kind of horrors to avoid going back to Earth.

But Rev could have made it easier and didn’t. In fact, he seemed to have a fascination with Harper. He pushed and prodded the kid in a "friendly" way that seemed a bit creepy even to Beka. The very past that made Harper the worst person to do that to drew Rev in. Rev could go to extremes in an effort to make up for his people’s predations, yet he sometimes became offended at Harper’s flinches.

She didn’t have the nerve to ask Harper what he thought of it. She doubted he’d give her an honest answer if she did ask. She’d spoken to Rev about it, but he didn’t see any wrong and couldn’t correct his behavior yet. Eventually he’d get it, she was sure.

"The best way you can be his friend now is to leave him alone," Beka said.

  


* * *

Harper softly banged a rhythm against the wall with his fist and croaked, "...abuse me, erase me, use me, debase me / Throw me in the airlock and space me...." A popular number on the music charts at El D two months ago.

"Don’t tempt me," Beka said as she crouched down with a tray of food and drinking water.

"Oh, my redheaded angel of mercy." It sounded like it hurt him to talk, not that that would ever stop him. "You even have this kind of halo of light. ‘S pretty."

"Right."

Even with the covers tossed off, he seemed to be roasting from the inside. She so wished that they had an outpost nearby that wouldn’t take them too far out of their delivery path, because she’d love to get him looked at by a professional. Not that that didn’t have its own risks. Some of the doctors, fascinated by his lack of immunities, tried to keep him.

Beka put a coldpack across his forehead. "It’ll have to get better, Harper. Eventually you’ll have caught everything and be done with them."

"Ha, ha, ha." His eyes blazed with fever, but he didn’t look delirious when he said, "Towfigh wants me to die, ya know."

"I doubt that."

"Five minutes ago he told me to hurry up and die already. It doesn’t get much more blatant than that. Unless he put a weapon to my head or tried to smother me, which may be coming soon."

"He said it jokingly."

"Nope."

"Damn." That bastard. Lazy _and_ threatening her crew wouldn’t wash with her.

"If I end up a corpse, I want an investigation."

"At the end of this run...." Towfigh was out.

Harper nodded slightly. "Cool."

"How are you holding up?"

"I’m so bored. My eyes are jittering in their sockets too bad to read or watch a holo." He nibbled a protein bar without much real hunger, a bad sign for him. "But I’m not totally useless. Something’s wrong with the AP system, I can hear it. With one of the valves maybe. The ship’s rhythm is off. Sounds like that song I was beating out, and it shouldn’t."

She’d tell him he was crazy, except that she noticed it too now. She’d known that something was off but hadn’t been sure what it was, thinking that maybe all the personality conflicts going on lately might be the problem she sensed.

"Thanks. I’ll get on it."

"Good. And watch out, boss. There’s a Magog roaming around. Stay armed at all times."

Poor kid. "I’ll keep that in mind, but we’re safe here. It can’t hurt us on my ship."

"Uh-huh." He didn’t look convinced.

"Really."

  


* * *

And there it was, an AP valve flow problem. As Beka fixed it, she hummed happily to herself. How many captains had an engineer who could accomplish things even while deathly ill in bed? Just by listening? While he did work this good, even despite being a repository for every passing bug, Harper didn’t have to worry about being sent back to Earth.

Not that she had to tell him that. He seemed to do his best work under pressure.

 

### End


End file.
